Jonathan Lyons
American Philosophical Society
Time: 5:30pm
Location: Franklin Hall, 427 Chestnut
Jonathan Lyons is an independent scholar and author, focusing on problems of intellectual history, epistemology, and the sociology of knowledge. He has a PhD in sociology from Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia, and a BA with honors in Russian and History from Wesleyan University. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
With the “first Drudgery” of settling the American colonies now well and truly past, Benjamin Franklin announced in 1743, it was high time that the colonists set about improving the lot of humankind through collaborative inquiry. From Franklin’s idea emerged the American Philosophical Society, an association hosted in Philadelphia and dedicated to the harnessing of man’s intellectual and creative powers for the common good. The animus behind the Society was and is a disarmingly simple one ─ that the value of knowledge is directly proportional to its utility. This straightforward idea has left a profound mark on American society and culture and on the very idea of America itself ─ and through America, on the world as a whole.